한국어 대명사 ‘우리’

Abstract

Lee, Han-gyu. 2007. A Pragmatic and Sociocultural Approach to the So-called 1st Person Pronoun wuli in Korean. Discourse and Cognition 14.3, 155-178. This paper aims at providing a sociocultural and pragmatic account of the reference of the so-called 1st person plural pronoun wuli in Korean. Socioculturally, the pronoun is claimed to have been broadly used to indicate the in-group whose concept goes against that of the out-group in a collectivism-based Korean society. This in-group-based approach leads us to the claim that wuli is not a first-plural pronoun, but rather a first-person pronoun which can refer to the speaker as well as the in-group members including the speaker; it provides a systematic account for not only the plural and singular uses of wuli but the differences in singular uses of the two noun-modifying first person pronouns wuli and nay. Pragmatically, it is fully discussed how the concept of the in-group is exploited to yield many functions of wuli. (Kyung-Hee University)